Keed opens up

Star V8 Supercar engineer Phil Keed has made it clear his move to DJR Team Penske was driven by the potential opportunity to eventually work in North America rather than extending his working relationship with Fabian Coulthard.

Keed, who has been at Brad Jones Racing for six years and with Coulthard throughout his most successful period in V8 Supercars over the last three years, said the likelihood was he would have gone looking for work in the USA in the next few years anyway if this job hadn’t come about.

However, he also made clear that DJR Team Penske had not made any guarantees about shifting him to the USA in the future, where Penske has both IndyCar and NASCAR operations.

“Absolutely, there are no guarantees and for me I am focussed on V8 Supercars and succeeding in V8 Supercars,” Keed said.

“My understanding is that at Penske if you are the right sort of person they are very pro-active at moving people around different places. But this is not a pre-determined thing where I move in three years or anything like that.”

Family reasons play an important part in Keed’s desire to work in the North America. His wife Amy is from Canada and they would like to live closer to her home with their three young children.

“Had I not taken this step (to DJR Team Penske) in the next couple of years we would have struck out and just tried to find a motorsport job in the USA,” Keed told v8supercars.com.au. “And I did investigate and they don’t know us and me so it actually is quite a step to take to try and break into motorsport over there.

“Now with three kids and a family you can’t just strike out at the bottom again.”

Keed is no stranger to “striking out”. He went to the UK and worked his way up within the Prodrive Subaru world rally championship program, then returned to Australia and did the same thing in V8 Supercars.

He had periods at Team Brock and Ford Performance Racing and then went with Jason Bright to Brad Jones Racing six years ago.

He and Bright broke through for BJR’s first V8 Supercars win in Perth in 2011. Since 2013 he and Coulthard have combined for five wins and six poles in championship races. But he cites Bright’s 2013 JR Trophy win as the highlight of his career, let alone his time at BJR.

“I wasn’t engineering the car but I felt really part of the team that achieved it. And in my whole career that was the highest,” he said.

Keed admits that leaving Albury-based BJR, which is owned and run by brothers Brad and Kim Jones, has been the hardest part of the decision to go to the American-owned big bucks American team, which will expand to two Ford Falcon FG Xs for Coulthard and Scott Pye in 2016.

“Any positivity about anywhere else makes where you are sound bad, but it’s not that at all,” said Keed. “I am not unhappy in any way but I just see such exciting opportunities there.

“We have been incredibly happy at BJR. It is a really friendly team; everyone is friends outside of work. We socialise, all the boys go to the pub on Friday night and all the wives and girlfriends are really good friends. So it’s been absolutely fantastic, partly because it is a one team town and partly because it’s a great little city.

“I am incredibly sad to leave this team because I am very happy here. It’s a fantastic engineering group. They are really good guys and the whole team is led really well and with honesty.”

While it hadn’t been confirmed, Keed said he expected to continue with Coulthard at DJR Team Penske. They have formed an effective if unusual and sometimes fiery combination. Keed has a reputation for being something of a ‘mad professor’ while the New Zealander is more of a cool urbanite.

“We are definitely different personalities,” Keed said. “I am very introspective and like to analyse and think through things and reassess things.

“Fabs is a driver in the true sense and probably needs a very direct and simple sense of where we are going and he is 100 per cent focussed on the driving and the feedback and the way he is reading the car.

“Sometimes I feel like we end up a little bit at odds. But those are interfacing issues. We actually get on really, really well socially and everything else. But for me I am a very passionate and fiery sort of person so I feel like I push people and I sometime feel like I find the limits.”

Keed said he was looking forward to contributing to the DJR Team Penske engineering group and working on the FG X, which has proved a very capable racing car in its debut year, with Prodrive Racing Australia’s Mark Winterbottom taking his first championship.

“I think my strength is in my ability to join a process and help drive that process where you have constant improvement, not necessarily bring instant improvements from anywhere else.

“And that car is fast. It is really quick. It’s quick with the Penske guys and it’s really quick with the PRA guys.”

Despite his strong record, Keed has yet to win the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 or a drivers’ championship.

“I think you have to have the ingredients right for those things to occur,” he said. “Some of the best engineers and drivers in pitlane have gone their whole career and not achieved either.

“I think you have to do a very good job. They are definitely on my list to achieve.”